Coyle: Still cliquing after all these years

So I did it. I shelled out the $40 per person to attend my 20th high school reunion Thanksgiving weekend.

Alice Coyle

So I did it. I shelled out the $40 per person to attend my 20th high school reunion Thanksgiving weekend.

Sparsely attended is the best way to describe the event, which was held in a function facility about 15 minutes from my parents’ suburban Philadelphia home.

Although I had mine by my side, spouses of the Abington High School Class of 1987 members were as rare as the trays of pigs in blankets and mini quiche being butlered around the cavernous ballroom. There was a DJ spinning — you guessed it — a variety of 80s tunes, but no one was dancing.

The old high school cliques were still cliquing, forming small groups surrounding the small bar in the room, and when the hors d’oeuvres buffet opened for business, no one really budged from their appointed positions closest to the cocktails.

I had classes with some of the people or knew them from the school newspaper, yearbook staff or other clubs, but I wasn’t really close to any of them outside of school.

My dearest and oldest friend, Amie, talked me into going to the reunion. And while she was what I would call shy and reserved in high school, she worked the room better than anyone Friday night, whizzing around with old photos we found piled on one of the tables and showing classmates pictures of themselves during their glory days on the playing fields or grooving on the high school gym floor at one of our school dances.

My husband mixed and mingled well, too, chatting with a classmate who I didn’t recall, and one of the only other people there who brought their spouse. He and his wife live in Chelmsford, Mass., which gave us some common things to discuss as we now live in the same Commonwealth.

Among the things I noticed; the women in my class have aged better than the men, many of whom were very gray and others surprisingly bald. There were a few classmates who clearly had some ”work done” and I found them truly unrecognizable. I was glad to hear so many classmates tell me I looked “exactly the same” as I did 20 years ago. I know they’re exaggerating or out-in-out lying, but it made me feel good.

The pictures on the other hand didn’t lie; the hair was big, the shorts were short, the sleeves were puffy and the pants were baggy. Amie got us geared up for the reunion Thanksgiving night digging out our old yearbooks from junior and senior high school so we could brush up on names and faces. My 8-year-old son thought it was cool his mom was on the seventh-grade girls basketball team, and my husband convinced him that it was I who started the headband trend that Paul Pierce and other NBA stars continue today.

In the end, I was disappointed to see so few of the people I knew best during our high school years at the reunion. And I was surprised by some of the very nice conversations I had with people who never spoke to me in high school.

The highlight of the event was getting two big bear hugs from Larry Waugh, who played football and was well known and liked in high school. He exudes charisma and charm even 20 years later, and while I didn’t really know him very well back in the mid-1980s, I felt like I wish I had, and certainly wanted to last week. We chatted briefly and I felt sincerity, a genuineness from him that was lacking in my reunion with so many others that night.

High school seems, and really was a lifetime ago, but as much as things have changed for us in our lives, the people we knew then haven’t changed much at all.

Alice Coyle is the managing editor for Community Newspaper Company’s Raynham office. She can be reached at acoyle@cnc.com.